My Foray into My Midwestern Roots

Deck the Halls

Denise Olson, at Moultrie Creek is hosting the Christmas Tour of Blogs that will kick off on Dec. 15th. Genea-bloggers are encouraged to create a post describing their family’s Christmas decorations – past or present.

So sit back and enjoy my tour!

This is the gold wreath – made out of newspapers and painted with gold spray paint – that my mom made for our home when I was growing up. It hung above our fireplace mantel. On the mantel were Christmas decorations.

This was the garland hung around the wrought iron railing by the front door.

Me in front of the Christmas tree probably about 1969-1970. Notice the end table next to the tree has the red Christmas candles on it. Our windows also had a single electric candle that we lit after the sun had gone down. For a few years we even decorated the fir trees in our front yard with lights. In the photo below, you’ll notice that our large, picture window had several of these “candles” on the sill.

My first real “adult” Christmas in my own apartment included a wicker chair strung with garland and red satin balls because I was too poor to afford a Christmas tree! The first tree I bought was in 1984 at the local Gibsons that cost $14! It was pretty lonely looking (sort of like the tree on “A Charlie Brown Christmas”) until the lights, decorations and tinsel was put on.

We moved into our home 20 years ago, so we have had two decades of creating new and wonderful memories at Christmas time. My husband would bring the tree and all the decorations down from the attic either the first or second weekend of December. After setting up the tree and stringing the lights, I would hand each child one ornament at a time to place on the branches. Of course as they grew older, they each had several of their “school” made decorations to use. For the very first ornament, I took a picture and once the entire tree was decorated (after I hung the garland or threw the tinsel), I would position them on the floor gazing up at the tree in wonder for a photo.

Generally the only other decorations that go up are the Santa Stocking, given to our youngest daughter many years ago by some good church friends, the Christmas Wreath (it has changed only a few times in 20 years),

and the gold “Jingle Bell” that hangs between our dining and living room. The bell belonged to my grandparents and as a child, I loved to pull the string and hear the tune as Santa and his reindeer (on the outside) spun around it. I was fortunate enough to end up with it many years ago. If you look at to the upper right of the tree over the floor lamp, you can see the bell.) My children have on occasion put lights in their bedroom windows and once I wrapped holly vines over the top of the living room arch.

I’ve either strung regular silver garland on the tree or “thrown” tinsel on each branch. However, the tree above (2003), I strung pearl beads as garland. The tree to the right (2006) I draped ribbon down from the top with bows tied on each length at different intervals. (The Jingle Bell is more visible in this picture.)

We’ve had the tree in two different places in our home. For the last ten years (at least) it has sat in this exact spot. This tree was purchased at an after Christmas sale, many years ago for half off the sale price! In 1999 some good friends were moving and gave us their pre-lit Christmas tree. It had so many white lights on it that we could feel the heat as soon as we walked into the room. Needless to say we gave it to our oldest daughter the following year and went back to using our well loved tree.

I hope you have enjoyed my tour of Christmases past and present. And may your family have a very Merry Christmas!